A Respectable Trade for a Woman
by haigan
Summary: On a research trip to the Caribbean, historical novelist Davida Dunn finds herself entangled in a mystery of chronological inconsistency.  Not even her writer's imagination can prepare her for where that mystery will lead her...
1. I shall never begin if I hold my peace

**A Respectable Trade for a Woman**

* * *

_On a research trip to the Caribbean, historical novelist Davida Dunn finds herself entangled in a mystery of chronological inconsistency.  
__Not even her writer's imagination can prepare her for where that mystery will lead her..._

_Time travel. Decided lack of romance. Historical inaccuracy and corresponding explanations offered. Random rambling of a vaguely literary nature._

* * *

**Chapter One: I shall never begin if I hold my peace**

"A trip to the Caribbean for _research_?" Trevor Buckley's scepticism was audible over the telephone. "Sounds like an excuse for a holiday to me, Davey darling-"

"Writer here, Trevor," Davida interjected swiftly. "Call it what you like, it won't stop the stories turning up of their own accord. Look, it's a wonderful setting for a historical novel. The War of Spanish Succession. Europe and the Americas in turmoil. The treasure fleets of Spain and Portugal under attack. Privateers and slavery. Colour, danger, amazing scenery, more political intrigue than you can shake a stick at-"

"And Sir Charles would be in the middle of it all?" Trevor was not entirely persuaded, but Davida thought she detected the signs that he was weakening.

"Well actually..." Davida cursed her honesty. Trevor would know no better if she told him Sir Charles Lancaster, darling of the court of Charles the Second, would next appear as a World War One flying ace taking on a herd of Viking war elephants. Trevor's editorial staff, on the other hand, were a completely different matter. They were certain to point out that her Sir Charles would be far too old to swash his buckler across Caribbean waters at the time Davida had in mind.

"No," Davida admitted, thinking fast. "But his _son_ could be..." She let her voice trail away enticingly. She could almost hear Trevor's thoughts in the silence that followed.

"A son! You would need the back story, of course," Trevor said slowly, after a long pause.

"Leave that for another novel. Let the readers speculate for a while," Davida stated. She knew Trevor was sold on the idea now. She had committed herself to somehow providing her erstwhile creation with at least one offspring, but she'd think of something and, frankly, it was about time that disgracefully charming rogue had his comeuppance. He'd seduced his way through most of the aristocracy of Europe, after all.

On the other hand, perhaps she should leave her choice of dates more flexible. Nobody knew for sure what Blackbeard was up to around the end of 1717. If she couldn't make something out of that, she had no business calling herself a writer. Even a son of Sir Charles would be middle-aged by then, however. Or she could try something earlier. Sir Charles himself would have been freed from the need for much of his artful spycraft once the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation settled down. She could send him out with the first English governor of Tortuga, right after the capture of Jamaica.

The thought of giving Sir Charles a son did appeal to her, now that she had thought of it. Why not do both? _Sir Charles, charming his way through the new world... an illicit liaison with a Naval officer's wife or daughter... then, several years later, the Caribbean sees the rising star of a young __man with a remarkable resemblance to the by then ageing philanderer... _

_Not too great a resemblance. Not nearly so much of a peacock_, Davida mused. _Less flamboyant and capricious_. So much about Sir Charles was the result of her inexperience as an author when she first created him. His unpredictability was largely because she had wished him to be considerably more intelligent than his contemporaries, and yet her ability to write him as such had been lacking. Thus she had hidden his intellect behind a smokescreen of seemingly pointless mannerisms and habits. She had made him devilish handsome and quite the fashion model because she had been (she admitted to herself now) rather bad at portraying genuine charm. A son could be her chance to create a new protagonist, with the benefit of lessons learned.

"Davey? Davey, are you still there?" Trevor's voice broke into her thoughts.

"What?" With an effort, Davida dragged her mind back from the seventeenth century. "Sorry, Trevor. I was hit with the plot hammer. Repeatedly."

Trevor laughed. "As long as it leads to another Davida Dunn novel, darling, there's no need to apologise. Let me know the dates. And stay in touch! I hear even desert islands have wireless hotspots nowadays."

_I'll 'darling' you one of these days,_ Davida thought without heat as she said her goodbyes and ended the call. _You're a publishing director, not an actor_. Her thumb hovered over the keypad of the phone for a long moment, forgotten as she made her final decision. Then she reached for her laptop, and started looking up flights.


	2. There is a history in all men's lives

**Chapter Two: There is a history in all men's lives**

Monteverdi, Bach and Purcell were stored on the iPod. Paperback copies of _The Best of Men _and _Captain Blood_ were tucked into the hand luggage. Davida's laptop battery was freshly charged. She still felt unprepared for the eight and a half hour flight from Gatwick to Bridgetown.

She craned her head around and looked along the ranked seating of the 777, rapidly filling with ten-abreast economy-class holidaymakers. She had a window seat, thank deity-of-choice, but the wing and its single large engine shoved impolitely into her line of sight. She had a third of a day to look forward to, playing sardine in this airborne tin can, breathing recycled air and subsisting on plastic food. She should have taken a cruise ship instead.

A man was peering at the seat numbers of Davida's row. A little taller than average, and with a trim build that probably owed more to genetics than exercise. He had a rather ordinary face that was nevertheless quite attractive, and was the sort of age that made it hard to tell how old that was, although Davida placed him on the younger side of forty. _British_, Davida decided. _Only the British could manage that utterly impersonal expression of politeness_. _He probably has some terribly responsible job and is very careful with his money._ The faint lines of his face suggested he was no stranger to worry, but faced such things stoically.

Davida had dismissed her initial thoughts of a bank manager and spun herself the story of a medical specialist working in a private hospital before she realised that he was now sitting beside her, murmuring an apology for minutely intruding on her personal space as he settled in. Not far behind him a portly, elderly gentleman washed up on the shores of their little island of seats, the man's face reminiscent of a constipated basset hound. This last arrival arranged himself with much grunting and sighing, swallowed two small white pills, and promptly fell asleep.

Four hours into the flight and the elderly gentleman was still asleep. Davida had found, slightly to her surprise, that the gentleman immediately beside her was indeed a bank manager, that he was called Thomas Norrington, and that he was travelling to the Caribbean in the hopes of tracing a relative of his. Nobody that he had met, but, rather, the brother of his many-times-great grandfather, one James Norrington.

"We have a suspicion that he was quite the scoundrel," Thomas said, his rather inexpressive face compensated for by what had turned out to be a considerable capacity for intelligent conversation. "He wrote several letters to his family back in England, describing his career... or what he _claimed_ was his career."

Davida made the appropriate sounds of anticipatory encouragement.

Thomas continued with a will. "According to his letter dated sixteen seventy-two, he had received a posting as a Naval Lieutenant on HMS Dauntless-"

"But," Davida put in before she could stop herself, "the first Dauntless wasn't launched until eighteen... I forget. Early nineteenth century, anyway."

Thomas lifted a mild eyebrow. "You know your naval ships?"

Davida confessed, quite truthfully, to being a History graduate.

"You'll probably see why I'm so suspicious of the letters then," Thomas said with a slight smile. "By the time of a missive ten years later he seems to have risen to the heights of Commodore at Port Royal, and talks of the sinking of HMS Interceptor-"

"HMS what?"

"Quite." Thomas said dryly. "There has never been an HMS Interceptor. There's a long gap in his correspondence soon afterwards and then he resumes his letters, this time describing himself as an Admiral serving the East India Trading Company..."

"An Admiral? I didn't think non-Naval fleet ranks went higher than Commodore, although I could be wrong. Which East India Company?" Davida asked, dubiously.

"He never specifies, but he implies that the Company is working hand in hand with the British Navy-"

"_British_?"

"...when, as I'm sure you are already aware, Britain did not even exist under that name until seventeen oh seven," Thomas continued, nodding.

Davida whistled through her teeth. "That's a lot of holes in the story. Could the letters be forgeries?"

"If they are then the forger did a remarkably good job of replicating the handwriting," Thomas said, although his tone of voice indicated that he was not closed to the possibility that the letters were indeed fakes. "There are earlier documents, you see, dating from before James left England, that we can be quite certain are genuine."

"So you decided to go to the Caribbean yourself to find out if there was any grain of truth at all in the letters?" Davida grinned. That was exactly what she would have done.

Thomas spread his hands, palms up, sketching a shrug. "I decided to take a holiday. The letters were a convenient excuse."

Davida laughed, and returned to her interrupted book.

Several hours later, both book and laptop lay almost forgotten in Davida's lap as she feasted her eyes on the view through the window, mentally blanking out the expanse of metal that cut it in half. The approach to Barbados was over water that really was as blue as the brochure photographs showed, a blue that shaded into turquoise closer to land. White caps crested the waves a short distance offshore. _Reefs_? Davida wondered, spotting darker patches shadowing the seabed, although she did not know if her guess was correct. Before she could ponder further they were inland, overflying splattered patches and stripes of boxy urban buildings and brown-and-green blocks of fields. The airport itself leaped up before them, with its roof of curious white pyramids, and beyond that a shoreline of what might be sand, and broken rock slabs which only grudgingly gave way to the grey runway that shimmered in the sun's heat.

_The aircraft seemed to thrust ever faster as it descended, the eye deceived by the decreasing distance to those things earthbound, the changing engine-note misleading the ear. The infinite heavens contracted down to the immediacy of land. Above the open green and grey and dusty-tan expanse rushed the winged metal steed, vibrating with impassioned impatience as it neared the earth and stretched to touch it. Then all was noise and the press of air, the shuddering of straining flaps and spoilers and the drumroll beat of braking wheels thrumming through the fuselage and seat..._

Davida sighed in irritation as the seatbelt lights switched off with a cheery yet annoying 'bing!'and those around her started to collect up their belongings ready to disembark. She saved her swiftly-typed paragraph and shut down her laptop. Perhaps she should write a blog; otherwise, that little word-sketch was destined to moulder forever on her hard drive, along with any number of other such paragraphs. She patted the headrest of her seat as she filed out into the gangway, the sleepy old gentleman and Thomas Norrington both already swept up ahead into the sluggish flow of passengers. She'd become quite fond of the flying tin can after all.

They disembarked right onto the tarmac, processing in a ragged stream over to the arrivals building. Davida heard some complaints from other passengers at the indignity of being required to _walk_, but she tuned them out. She herself was charmed. She had only to turn her head and the glittering Caribbean Sea lay at the horizon, laden with salt smells and history and promise.

_The word 'azure' is so overused_. _If there is to be much seafaring in this novel I will have to be creative in my synonyms. Let's see... The solitary storm-battered galleon wallowed through the liquid glass of the waves: a ageing, aristocratic matron stubbornly sheltering her weighty jewels even with the finery of her clothing hanging in tattered shreds of canvas. Above her the sky broom of the Caribbean wind swept away the thick cobweb clouds; and through the haze of the lazuline horizon, gilded by the emerging sun, slipped the silent grey-sailed sloop, _Golden_... no... _Witty Nell_, prowling the cobalt deeps..._

"Passport please."

"What?" Davida blinked. Images of tall ships and a spray-dusted ocean melded into railings and a uniform and a polite dark face.

"Passport please, mam." The customs officer moved a hand that Davida only then realised he'd been holding out expectantly.

"Oh! Sorry. I was miles away." Davida was too used to her own self to display much embarrassment, although she did wonder how long the poor man must have been waiting for her response. "Is it far to Southern Palms?" she asked as she handed over the required document. She was suddenly anxious to type that description up, before she forgot the shape and feel of it.

"Miss Davida Dunnock?" The customs official looked between Davida's photograph and her face, then nodded and handed the passport back, apparently satisfied. "Welcome to Barbados. Fifteen, twenty minutes if you catch a taxi."

"Thank you!" Davida smiled her thanks. The man could as easily have said nothing and waved her on her way; many customs guards would have done so. _Fifteen, twenty minutes? I'd better type it up in the arrivals lounge..._


	3. The game's afoot

**Chapter Three: The game's afoot**

It was fitting, Davida felt, that the Barbados Museum was housed in what had once been the military prison. The Bajans had achieved pride without arrogance, identity without isolation, independence without aloofness. They had turned slavery into freedom. It was in keeping with the island's character that the building which once held men captive was now the cage of history itself.

The balconied edifice had a curious character of brick such that its colour was capable of change depending on the mood of the sun. So it was that when Davida first arrived, in the youthful and maidenly rosiness of the morning, it was touched with pink; but when she emerged into the courtyard, where once soldiers and horses paraded, the bronze heat of mid-day had cooked it to a pale golden tan. Glad of her hat and glasses as she crossed a grassy sunlit space, for she burned easily, Davida sought the coolness of the shadow in the corner of two walls, beneath a slender palm. As she relaxed there, revelling in the taste and smell of the air after the stuffy confinement of yesterday's travel, she wondered if Thomas Norrington would be finding his way to the museum as well. Most of the letters he had described had placed his almost-ancestor's activities in the waters around Jamaica and Haiti, not Barbados.

It was not Thomas that Davida spotted, but the ageing gentleman who had slept out the flight in the seat beyond him. His unmistakeable, florid face was a ripe strawberry atop the crisp unbleached linen of his suit. _A strange sort of balloon to be bobbing through these surroundings_, Davida decided. She made no move to attract the man's attention as he bustled across the former parade-ground with neat, fussy little steps. They had not spoken through the entire flight; Davida doubted he would remember her. He vanished into the interior gloom of the building, having never once looked around or strayed from his path. Davida couldn't help wondering why he had chosen to visit the museum. His manner, even without ever having once heard him converse, gave her the impression that he would automatically disagree with anything anybody told him, including the labels for the museum exhibits.

Revived after a light lunch, Davida felt armed for the afternoon. There had been a particularly striking chart in the museum's map collection, which Davida had viewed that morning, and she was of a mind to see it again. On returning to the display, however, she was unable to find it. It was hard to miss, being particularly distinctive- not of local make but with a backing of bamboo, in Chinese fashion. It had been as fanciful a work of art as any map Davida had ever seen, a veritable feast of mingled Asian and Western imagery with strange, incomprehensible lettering, much stained and well-used by time. The most distinctive feature had been the large circular hole right in the centre. The museum's guide, however, did not recall a chart of that nature, and Davida was quite certain that anybody, having once seen it, would be unable to forget it.

Thinking that it must have been part of one of the other exhibits, Davida retraced her steps around the building. It was an exercise that left her hot, thirsty, footsore, and beginning to doubt her own memory. She hunted fruitlessly until closing time, and even then she lingered past her welcome in the gift shop. Finally she spotted a postcard of her prey in the rack near the door, which gave her renewed confidence in her recollections and dismissed her nagging uncertainty about whether she had only dreamed the chart. The girl at the cash register gave the picture a puzzled look, as though she had never seen such a thing, but was happy enough to take Davida's money for the card.

There was a security guard waiting impatiently at the exit, giving Davida and his watch significant looks. Davida hurried out apologetically, then paused as he closed up behind her. She turned to stare, frowning, at the solid wood of the door. She couldn't be entirely sure, but she was almost certain that when she had passed the postcard rack again on the way out of the door, the rest of the postcards of the chart had gone.

* * *

The Barbados night-life invited Davida to experience its specialities of calypso and rum, but she found that the travel of the previous day and the long walk around the museum had tired her. She retired to her hotel room after supper, taking her books and laptop out onto the balcony along with a single rum cocktail. She rather thought any more than one drink would send her to sleep rather too quickly. The hotel was kind enough to provide free wireless access, and she used it to send a few quick emails to friends and relatives: I'm here, I'm fine, I'm having a nice time; variations on the theme of 'wish you were here' that would not be outright lies, no mention of strange vanishing charts that they would only dismiss as her usual overactive imagination. To an old friend and fellow historian Rebecca she also mentioned the story of James Norrington, as the village Thomas had named back in England was a mere five minutes up the road from Rebecca's house.

Any further efforts at the keyboard, however, were soon abandoned in favour of gazing out to sea and sipping from her chilled glass. Swallows flashed past overhead in dizzying aerial manoeuvres, and the evocative echo of a distant steel band drifted over the water. Her book lay forgotten.

A faint noise from within her room drew her attention. A sharp, hot spurt of alarm shot through her and she rose to peer back through the open door. Too many news reports of hotel crimes rose into her mind. For one desperate moment she wondered whether she would kill herself if she tried escaping from her balcony, and concluded that she probably wouldn't although she might twist an ankle. Her moment of panic abated enough for her to take in that her room was utterly empty of anything but her own possessions and the hotel furniture, and she let out a long and calming breath. The sound must have been someone in the next room, or the corridor outside.

While she was still standing, she slipped back inside and picked up her bag from where she had left it carelessly dropped on the end of her bed. Carelessly indeed- it had spilled half its contents over the bed covers. Scooping her errant belongings back inside, she delved into the side pocket and pulled out the postcard she had purchased earlier, taking it out onto the balcony with her along with her digital camera. She passed the rest of the evening taking the best close-up of the card that she could, uploading the photograph onto the laptop, and examining the magnified result with fascination.

The Caribbean twilight finally slid into purple-tinged night, laden with the banana-smell of cut sugar-cane and the aroma of grilling fish, and filled with a strange flute-like whistling that piped musically from the palms. Davida packed her things away, closed the balcony doors behind her, and crawled into the softly enveloping arms of cool cotton bedclothes. The last thing she did before surrendering to sleep was to slip the postcard under her pillow.


	4. And I am all forgotten

I thought it was time I put an authorial word in to thank those who have been reviewing: Thank you! Your comments are very kind and remarkably detailed, and I do appreciate those who have taken the time to make specific comments about things they liked. And now, on with the show!

**

* * *

****Chapter 4: And I am all forgotten**

The early morning street was a canvas of vibrant colour exuberantly splashed against the pastels and whites of plastered two- and three-story buildings, as clean and bright as if it had been newly washed. Woken and invigorated by the unfamiliar muted thunder of the sea beyond her windows, Davida did not wait for the hotel breakfast but hastened to start her day before the sun regained its brazen tropical strength. A smiling street-side vendor furnished her with fresh fruit, which she ate with relish and then stood beneath a bright yellow shop awning, shamelessly sucking the juice from her fingers.

As she rubbed her palms together to remove the last residual stickiness, she spotted a familiar face among the scattered pedestrians. "Mr Norrington! Thomas!" She waved to catch the attention of her fellow traveller from the flight, then wove her way across the street between colourful stalls and slow-moving vehicles that echoed the local fondness for white.

Thomas seemed momentarily puzzled as Davida made her way over and stopped beside him, but then his expression cleared somewhat. The corners of his mouth turned down a little once his small smile of greeting faded. "Miss Dunnock. Or Davida, since everybody everywhere seems to be on first name terms. How are you?"

"I'm well, thank you for asking, and looking forward to a day of laid back sightseeing," Davida replied, looking up at his winter-pale face and spotting a slight darkening of the skin beneath his eyes. "If you don't mind my saying so, though, _you_ seem less than relaxed. Is the climate here too hot for you?"

Thomas shook his head restlessly. "No, nothing like that. I had some bad news, that's all. I have to cut the holiday short."

"Oh dear." Davida automatically injected her voice with sympathy, which was not entirely feigned. Thomas had been good company on the flight. "Nothing too terrible I hope?"

Thomas shook his head. "I hope so too. My house was broken into last night- the police managed to get hold of me about an hour ago. My house back home, I mean."

"That's _awful_!" Davida exclaimed. "You've only been away a day! Did they take much?"

"Apparently not," Thomas replied, relief colouring his voice. "They suspect he was put off by the alarm and ran away."

"Or she, I suppose," Davida mused.

Thomas drew in a swift breath, his brows meeting above his nose. "She?"

"Sorry," Davida said with a grimace. "I didn't mean to imply anything. It just occurred to me that people always assume burglars are male." Mentally she kicked herself. The ability to spot such things was a blessing for a writer; her occasional lapses when it came to keeping that ability in its place had earned her more than one strange look and cost her a friend or two.

"That's true, I suppose," Thomas agreed, his shoulders relaxing. "What worries me more is that on top of the break-in, I'm _almost_ sure someone went through the bags in my hotel room yesterday, although I haven't found anything missing."

Davida was on the point of mentioning her moment's fright of the evening before, when she thought better of it. It would be a bit rude given his own far greater problem, and there was no sense in making mountains out of molehills. "Could it have been the cleaners? Moving things around when they did the room?"

"Probably." Thomas sighed. "Anyway. They want me back in England to go over things and make sure nothing _was_ taken. Bloody nuisance."

"It's a shame," Davida said, sad for him. "You won't be looking for your umpti-great uncle after all."

Thomas gave her a confused look. "My what?"

"Your chronologically-confused letter-writing Caribbean relative?" Davida prompted. "The one you were telling me about on the 'plane."

"I don't remember that," Thomas said, now looking vaguely irritated as well as confused. "I've never had any relatives in this part of the world, as far as I know."

"But..." It was Davida's turn to frown. "You must do. His name was James. He was a brother of your great-great-lots of greats-grandfather. You even quoted from his letters home."

"I think you must have the wrong person," Thomas said, polite but a little put out. "I enjoyed our conversation on the flight, but it must have been someone else you were talking to about a relative. Look, I'm sorry to have to run out on you now, Davida, but I must go and book my flight home. I hope _you_ manage to have a good holiday." He wasn't rude in how he stepped away then, giving a slight nod and hurrying off, but he was very decisive in making an end of the discussion. He left Davida behind him at the side of the road, staring in mixed shock and puzzlement.


	5. This distilled liquor drink thou off

**Chapter Five: And this distilled liquor drink thou off**

To add to Davida's misgivings about her own memory, a revisit to the museum later that morning proved even less productive than the previous afternoon. There was no sign of the Chinese chart, nor anyone among the staff who could recall the item. Were it not for the postcard she would have convinced herself that she was mistaken, that she must have been remembering it from a different location or from a dream.

Trying to put rising paranoia out of her mind, Davida took herself off for the afternoon to one of those great monuments to historical Barnados- the rum factory. Mount Gay Rum, the 'rum that invented rum' if their own literature was to be believed. The oldest distillery on Barbados, the island where rum was first produced. _The motherlode of rum, as it were,_ Davida thought_. No, that's not right. Rum is liquid. The Wellspring of Rum? The Fountain of Rum? _The distillery looked very well for its age. Over three hundred years old and not a wrinkle in sight, the walls painted a perfect (and perfectly unsurprising) white and the buildings surrounded by lush vegetation and a profusion of flowers. _Well that's one counterargument next time someone points out that alcohol is bad for the health. Probably only counts for buildings, though_.

One of the very first faces that Davida spotted amongst the tourists assembling for the afternoon's guided tour was that same rotund, elderly gentleman who had shared her row on the flight over. _Still looking as if someone rained on his picnic_, Davida commented to herself, and then felt privately mortified when he came over to introduce himself.

"Reynard Valaton, mademoiselle. I think we took the flight together?" He offered a pudgy, blue-veined hand. The skin was soft and cool and ever so slightly damp. Davida tried very hard not to cringe.

"Davida Dunnock," she replied, dropping the handshake as swiftly as she could without offence, very glad that he did not attempt a more Continental greeting. "You were one seat across from me. Where are you from originally, if you don't mind my asking? That accent is _not_ British." Somehow she'd expected him to be a native of her own country. Not an unreasonable assumption, having been on a flight out of London. The accent, however, was decidedly French, which, Davida reminded herself, did not mean that he _was_ French. He could be from Belgium, or from one of several former French colonies.

"Mexico," Reynard replied, then permitted himself a thin smile at Davida's reaction. "You make assumptions, oui? Do not feel bad, often people do so. I spent many years in France."

"I'm not sure how the rum here will compare to French wines," Davida remarked, striving to regain her composure.

"We shall see, Mademoiselle Dunnock," Reynard said, bowing slightly and half closing his eyes in a secretive way. "The rum is still young and bold and courageous. But it _is_ young."

"The first Mount Gay Rum Distillery was founded in seventeen oh three," the tour guide's voice broke in, sounding faintly offended. _He heard us talking_, Davida realised, and exchanged an amused glance with Reynard as the tour got under way. When rum first appeared, French wines had already been around for over two thousand years. Steeped in history the local speciality might be, but when viewed in those terms it was indeed _le petit enfant_. However, it was, Davida was prepared to admit, rather impolitic to point this out in the present location.

Reynard Valaton managed to position himself near Davida through the video that started the tour, which was played in a theatre dressed up as a rum shop. Davida found his presence a constant itch, forever hovering on the periphery of her vision. She tried not to be too obvious about repositioning herself when the tour guide led them off afterwards, using the exchange of introductions with other tourists to move herself through the group. The tactic brought her to the front, and thus made her prime target when the guide reached another station on the tour. She found the guide grinning at her and gesturing to a set of large jars.

Before very much longer, Davida found herself with her head poked into one jar after another, as she experienced the smell of the rum at various stage of the ageing and blending process. At each hit of fumes her head swam a little more, until she came up gasping with the room spinning around her. She found her elbow caught by a steadying hand.

"Ninety-seven percent alcohol, mademoiselle," Reynard's voice informed her with quiet amusement, close to her ear. "Your bravery is admirable. A little more caution is advisable."

"I think you're right," Davida coughed, and fumbled her way to one side to clear her mind as the rest of the tour participants took their turns sniffing and exclaiming. Reynard solicitously found her a place where there was a slight draught of fresh air, and then, to Davida's chagrined and slightly guilty surprise, he let her alone. Perhaps she hadn't been quite so subtle as she'd thought in the way she had avoided him earlier. She hoped she hadn't offended him.

* * *

Davida floated back to her hotel after the tour. The pavement was soft and rocked gently. The sky was a blue so clear and deep and beautiful she could almost cry. Each flower and face stood out with crystal clarity against the spinning, kaleidoscope backdrop of the street. The birds had put on a full orchestral performance especially for her.

_Rum_, Davida thought with fuzzy bliss. _Drink of the gods. I may be just a little bit drunk_.

She fell onto the bed in her room, giggling and then putting a hand to her mouth, despite the fact that there was nobody to hear her. _Yes, drunk_, she decided. _Oops_. Not so drunk that she had forgotten to recover her laptop from the hotel safe on her way up. She checked it now, and was thankful that she hadn't damaged it in tumbling to the bed. Taking it with her, she crawled up the monster of a bed to prop herself against the pillows. As it started up, she rummaged through her bag. Hopefully she'd remembered some painkillers. At some point the rum was likely to present its bill.

Painkillers found, she set the bag aside, then paused, and picked it up again. Something had been missing. She burrowed deeper, her mental inventory rather more haphazard than usual, but eventually she found it, or, more to the point, did not. The realisation sobered her sharply.

The postcard.

The postcard had gone.


	6. There's strange news come, sir

**Chapter Six: There's strange news come, sir.**

_So now what do I do?_ Davida thought, half hysterically. _Report it to the police? I can see that going _so_ well. 'What was stolen, ma'am?' 'A postcard, of a chart with a hole in it, that nobody else remembers, and all the other postcards have gone too, and nobody else remembers anything about those either.' 'And have you been drinking, ma'am?' 'Why yes, officer, I was just at the rum distillery earlier.' Oh yes, they'd be laughing about that one after they politely wrote it all down and showed me back out._

The rum distillery. It was the obvious place for the card to have been taken from her bag. There was one obvious person to have taken it... _but that_, she told herself, _would be _too_ obvious_. Except that she had it on the authority of a bona fide police detective that in real life, it usually was the obvious suspect, regardless of what detective fiction would have the readers believe.

_Most detective fiction._

_All right, _some_ detective fiction._

That made Reynard Valaton her primary suspect. She'd seen him at the museum too. _Hmm.. I've had too much rum to be thinking about this. Coffee. Perhaps that will clear my head._

The hotel room was amply provided with potential refreshments, including the requisite kettle, instant coffee, and generic-bags-purporting-to-be-tea. Generally Davida avoided tea when she was abroad. It was so much easier than trying to be polite about it while attempting not to spit it back out. She avoided the teabags now. No matter how bad the instant coffee was, how gritty the liquid, how peculiar the local variety of drinking water used to make it, how artificial or soluble the receptacle the beverage was served in, coffee never managed to taste quite as foul as tea made outside her home country. She did avoid the little plastic container of white liquid that claimed to be 'creamer', though. She was pretty sure that cows had had nothing whatsoever to do with its origins.

Armed with something liquid and black that smelled of coffee and was too hot to taste of anything, Davida curled herself back up against the pillows. Her eyes drifted to the balcony doors – locked – and over to the door into the hotel suite – also locked. There was a round white shape on the ceiling. _Smoke alarm_. There was another plastic shape on the ceiling in the bathroom. _Extractor fan. Stop looking for bugs. You're being silly._

_But I'm alone, in a foreign country, and if I'm not going mad then things are much stranger than one of my books. _She could go home, of course, but that was defeatist. Sir Charles wouldn't pack up and go home. _Sir Charles isn't a real person. Even when he starts using the keyboard via my fingers. And thoughts like _that_, my girl, are the reason some people doubt your sanity. _Davida gave herself a good mental shake._ Besides, in these days of electronic communications, it's much harder to be alone_.

With the coffee slowly freeing her spinning thoughts from the constricting embrace of rum, Davida booted the laptop. Her fingers beat an involuntary reggae rhythm beside the fingerpad until the familiar desktop appeared. Moments later she had her email client open, a cheerful chime and a happy envelope informing her that she had new mail. Email from yesterday, at least according to the laptop, which was content in the misconception that it was still in Britain, and was therefore convinced that what had been early morning for Davida was actually late the previous day.

Hi Davey,

Pottery too bloody hot why bother with the Caribbean when you can get happily sunburned  
here. Okay so I'm jealous. Not fired the kiln in this heat. Walked down to county record office  
instead and found your James Norrington. Baptised December 2nd 1654 (probably a Scorpio?).  
How's the holiday?

-Rebecca

_Pottery?_ _Oh yes, some sort of experimental archaeology_. Rebecca shared Davida's preference for seeing, smelling, feeling, and trying the real thing, when it came to history. This was why Rebecca was now making a useful second income selling Elizabethan-style blackwork embroidery. It was why Davida had a genuine sword scar in a place she was seldom inclined to show anybody. _Had I ever been inclined to write a novel about an Elizabethan needleworker, perhaps I'd be the one selling embroidery._ She pondered that thought further. _On the whole, I think I made the right choice._

It was also why Davida was now in the Caribbean, and was thus faced with a rather disturbing mystery. A relatively minor mystery, when one set things out with cool rationality, lacking as it did any deaths or riches. A puzzle to which Davida now had another piece. She went through the mental gymnastics required to work out that if she called Rebecca now she wouldn't be dragging her friend out of bed, and reached for the 'phone.

"_Davey?_" Rebecca sounded as if she might only be in the next room, which was strangely, if falsely, comforting. "Why on _earth_ are you phoning? You're supposed to be on holiday, forgetting to post the postcards until you're leaving and buying T-shirts with comments about only bringing back lousy T-shirts."

"I bought a postcard but someone stole it," Davida replied, fighting not to let herself sound as worried as she felt. "Rebecca! I am so glad to hear from you. I got the email you sent yesterday."

"Email? I sent an email?" Rebecca sounded puzzled. Genuinely puzzled.

"Yes! Yesterday, at..." Davida looked down to the screen to check the time again. Then she scrolled around a bit, and rooted through the trash.

"Davey?"

"It was there just a moment ago!" Davida sorted the inbox, to no avail. The email was irrefutably gone. "I sent you one about Norrington- James Norrington? Some seventeenth-century Naval officer who came from the village up the road from you?"

"Sorry, Davey, the last one I've got from you was before you left. You were gloating about the trip," Rebecca complained good-naturedly. "Funny you should mention the village though. The parish church was broken into last night."

Davida was fairly sure that the spinning sensation she felt now had nothing to do with the rum. "I... don't suppose there was any problem at the county records office as well?" she asked slowly.

"You've seen the news," Rebecca accused.

Davida opened her mouth, shut it again, and revised her initial response. "Let's pretend I haven't. Rebecca, what happened?"

"A fire." Rebecca, thankfully, was not one to try try to make it sound like dirty gossip. "_Four_ fire-engines, and it took them six hours to put it out. Nobody's officially announced the cause yet, there's all sorts of rumours about arson, and another one about it being some sort of ploy for extra funding, although I don't follow the logic behind that one."

"There doesn't need to be any logic," Davida responded with probably justified cynicism. _But I hope that isn't true. Not for this. Not for Norrington and the chart and whatever it is that's going on here. _"Was anybody hurt?"

"I don't think so," Rebecca replied, although there was an air of doubt to her tone of voice. "There was nothing in the news reports about injuries, and it was night time, the place would have been closed."

Davida glanced towards her window, seeing moving shadows where, she told herself, there was nothing to see. Nor would anybody be listening at the keyhole, not least because it was a hotel door and it did not have a keyhole to be listening at. "Well that's good to hear," she said with forced firmness. "It does sound as if you're having an interesting time back home. It makes my time here sound rather boring."

"Don't go wishing Chinese curses on me, Davey," Rebecca pleaded. "And remember to bring me back the nice large bottle of duty-free you promised."

"I'll remember," Davida assured her friend. "I'd better go, this call will be costing a fortune!"

"So why are you calling anyway, if you have email?" Rebecca asked, fondly scolding. "Not that it isn't lovely to hear from you."

"Oh... it's nice to hear a familiar voice, sometimes," Davida replied vaguely. "I hope you can get some of your pottery fired soon. Bye, Becs, I'll send you a postcard."

"Thank you. What, wait, how did you know I hadn't started the potter..."

Davida ended the call on Rebecca's puzzled query, feeling a small and slightly malicious spurt of satisfaction at her friend's puzzlement. _Didn't send an email, indeed_. But she couldn't blame Rebecca, unless she was going to blame Thomas Norrington as well, and any residual resentment that her friend was not immune to the mystery that seemed to be stalking her was largely swamped by her relief that the email was not purely her imagination after all. It _had_ existed, but now it was gone. Unfortunately, the only rational explanation for its disappearance was a virus or a hacker. She would have to assume that her email was compromised as a means of communication.

The hotel had public computer stations for its guests, and it would be easy to create a free email account. _Not the addresses I usually use. Rebecca has a work address, I can use that one instead. I can tell her everything, so if something... happens, somebody knows._ Davida shut the laptop down and scrambled off the bed, taking her bag and pausing to straighten herself up a little. Once she looked respectable enough for public view, she headed out of her room.

_With her questions and fears well hidden beneath a confident exterior bolstered by both courage and whalebone, Comtesse Isabelle set sail from the safe harbour of her boudoir into the seas of uncertainty. The Griffon was not lost! She had survived, though not her crew, and upon the rocks of that survival foundered the ship of her own freedom. Yet there was still a chance, if only she could sway the Englishman, Sir Charles Lancaster, to her side. If he could be persuaded to keep his silence on the true fate of the ship, then that accursed bearer of bad news would become, instead, her saviour... _

The sight before her brought Davida abruptly out of her reverie. There she was herself, reflected in the full-length mirror at the end of the hallway. Beyond that image, visible over her shoulder, was Reynard Valaton. Davida gasped and spun round, only to realise, too late, that that very reaction could betray her suspicions to any observer. She was indeed too late. The hallway behind her was now empty. Valaton was gone, as though he had never been there at all.


	7. From deceit bred by necessity

**Chapter Seven: From deceit bred by necessity**

Davida fought against the urge to gasp, even as part of her mind was watching with detachment as it turned reality into fiction. _The deliberate trembling of Isabelle's fan masked the entirely involuntary trembling of her hand. She couldn't catch her breath. The world seemed to be closing in about her and her thoughts were brittle confusion. Sir Charles was close enough that she might reach her gloved hand out to touch him, and yet with strangers all about them she could not speak. Who knew which of those strangers was an enemy, and what her words might betray to them?_

_Oh just for once, shut up! I need to think!_

Davida turned quickly through the doorway at the end of the hall, into the lobby; but rather than head for the public computer terminals she stopped at the reception. The young receptionist looked up from sorting a small pile of large envelopes, and smiled. Davida gave the girl full marks for making it a genuine expression rather than a politeness.

Davida resisted the urge to look behind her in order to find out who might be within earshot. "I'm planning some longer trips to other parts of the island- can I pay for my full stay now, and then I don't need to worry about when exactly I come and go? I'd like to take some of my money from the safe as well, please."

The receptionist busied herself with the arrangements, and Davida did take a look around her during the pause when there was nothing for her to do but wait, deciding that it would seem natural enough. There was nothing unusual that she could see, however. No figures lurking suspiciously, no faces she recognised. When her safe deposit box arrived, she started to leaf through the fat white envelopes within, debating how best to proceed, when she became aware that the receptionist was giving her a slightly puzzled, slightly questioning look. "Is there a problem?" Davida asked, struggling to keep her voice steady.

"Excuse me for asking, Miss Dunnock, but do you ever use another name?" the girl asked.

Davida hesitated a moment, wondering if this was a moment of recognition by a reader, or something else. She leaned in a little over the counter. "I write under the name Dunn," she admitted quietly, "but I'm here anonymously." Anonymous or not, her photograph was on the last page of every one of her novels for anyone to see, if anybody was that anxious to identify her.

The girl smiled and held out a large and somewhat heavy white envelope. "Then this is for you."

Davida took it cautiously, but the stamps were British and the date from immediately before her trip. She'd given people the name of her hotel before she left. It wasn't that suspicious that someone had sent her something here. To be on the safer side, however, she opened the envelope then and there in the hotel lobby, peeling up the flap and peering within. A handful of glossy magazines, all alike, peered back at her, along with a folded sheet of headed paper. Davida knew what it was now. Trevor Buckley, bless him, was always very good about which name he used when he sent her things, but the publications that her short stories appeared in were rather more erratic.

Davida stared down at the largely plain white envelope, and an idea came to her of exactly what she was going to do with five complimentary copies of the magazine. It took little legerdemain to switch the packet of magazines for the packet holding her passport and other essential documents. From another of the envelopes she openly took traveller's cheques and cash, and then slid the remainder in with the passport while seemingly putting them back in the deposit box. It was quite easy then to pick up the packet she wanted, tucking one face against herself so that the lack of address wouldn't show.

"Thank you very much," Davida said with a smile as she finished up. It was a smile of shaky relief on her part. If the receptionist, seated so close, did not seem to have noticed anything amiss then in all likelihood nobody else would have done so either. Hypersensitive to every glance turned her way by other hotel guests and the silent-footed staff, and trying desperately not to seem as jumpy as she felt, Davida returned to her room, resolutely steering clear of the computer terminals and their potential shoulder-squatters. Time enough to try the public terminal route when she could be sure she was unobserved. With hands made a little clumsy by nerves and haste, she packed a few essentials and a change of clothes into a small backpack. Then she tested her earlier assessment of whether she really could make it out of the balcony without breaking an ankle.


End file.
